If ever a course were to be offered on “How to lose your customer in 10 days”, I think the fine folks at [[http://remit2india.com|Remit2India]] would be right on top of their game. Now, we all know that with the increasing proliferation of the Indian //junta// world wide, the online money transfer market is an interesting market to be doing business in. Being one of the earlier players in this arena, you would have expected that Remit2India would have learnt the art of customer relationship management along the way. Well, you’ll be surprised.

Here are a few glimpses of my trysts with this wonderful service.

I got this gem in my inbox a few days back:

Hi kaustubh

This is Mr. X your Relationship Officer from Remit 2 India Service,
This is just to inform you that if you are planning to book any transaction in this month and need any assistance,I request you to mark me a mail so that i can assist you for the transaction.
If you are palnning to do a remittance of below 1000 USD please let me know b`coz we have some offers on that and if you are planning to for above 5000 USD we have a great deal for you to avail.
So do mark me a mail for further assistance or any queries.

Thanks,

Warm regards,
Mr. X,
Relationship Manager,
Remit2India.
A Times Group Company.
A Times Of India Group Company.

Astute readers of this blog will immediately make the following observations:
* My name is **not** Kaustubh or anything remotely similar. Its not visible above, but the ”To:” or ”CC:” headers did not contain my email address either. So I was **BCC**ed an email which was **not** meant for me. Fine privacy management, if you ask me. If we won’t look after one another, who will?
* Clearly Mr. X felt it was necessary to remind us that not only was Remit2India a Times Group Company, it was //also// a Times of India Group Company. Now don’t you forget that subtle distinction, you knuckleheads!
* Mr. X is the next generation relationship officer. Notice the funky lingo: b’coz …

Anywho, so here’s my obligatory response to them:

Mr. X,

Why the hell am I receiving this email? I’m not Kaustubh, my email does not
appear on the “To” or “CC” list, and your customer service apparently thinks
it is just fine to send random customer’s BCCed emails. And this is not the
first time its happening.

I’m politely requesting you and the rest of Remit2India team: PLEASE STOP
SPAMMING YOUR CUSTOMERS. Once again, so you don’t miss my point: PLEASE STOP
SPAMMING YOUR CUSTOMERS.

No response yet.

I’m sure you’re all fairly impressed by Mr. X by now. Naturally, he’s quite a pro. He’s been at this for quite a while now. Digging into my archives, I pulled this up:

To: a HUGE list of email addresses visible to EVERYONE ELSE.

Hi ,

This is to inform you that if you are planning to send any money to India we have great exchange rates to offer you and plus we have some very exciting offer in the month of march as this month is known as “March Money Maniac” where in u can win upto 500 INR on your per transaction, so do cash on to that offer to get some extra cash for your beneficiary .So please mark me a mail if you need to do any transaction so I can assist you in a better way.and help you try and get the best deal.

Thank you,

Regards
Mr. X
Relationship Officer
Times Of Money

The message is not as interesting as the people it was sent to. Apparently Mr. X thought it necessary that all Remit2India customers must get acquainted with one another, whether they want or not. So he composed a nice email, shoved in everyone’s addresses on the ”To:” list, and determined as he was, pressed Send. Smooth move there Johnny.

Not to leave behind this excellent opportunity, several of my fellow customers at Remit2India took it upon themselves to apprise others of the situation. It seems like a lot of people had not so good experiences with previous such offers from Mr. X, and diligently they found themselves **REPLYING TO ALL** with all the nuts and bolts and gory details. Ah, the camarederie.

After about 10 mails on this thread had piled into my inbox, I couldn’t take it anymore. I sent out the obligatory “Reply to all” message myself:

Mr. X: it was **extremely** inappropriate on your part to send out such an
unsolicited mass email, specially with everyone’s email address public
(resulting in the flurry of “reply to all” emails that we have seen on this
thread). PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SUCH ACTIVITIES IN FUTURE (FYI, this email from
you could easily quality as spam). It is unprofessional, unethical and the
sure shot way to lose your customers (as is evident from the responses so
far).

Dear All: I understand your concern and desire to inform everyone of the poor
service Remit2India provides, but please, lets not perpetuate a mistake here.
This is my first and last “reply all” email on this thread. Kindly remove me
from further discussions on this thread.

regards,
Diwaker

To their credit, my friends on the thread were listening, and they never got back to me again. To their discredit, however, the Remit2India folks just chose to ignore my complaints (yet again).

But the saga does not end here. Tired of the HTML-only emails that Remit2India so loves sending people, I sent them the following note:

Dear Remit2India,

Please maintain atleast the minimum required standards for advertising
emails:

o option to receive text only mails rather than HTML
o put recipient’s email address in the TO: field, rather than BCCing
mails or leaving the TO: field empty

As your mail stand right now, most of the spam scanners *will classify*
them as junk. Mine already does.

Hope you’ll pay attention.

best regards,
Diwaker

I got the following boiler plate response:

Dear Diwaker

Thank you for writing to us.

This is to inform you that we are currently working on it and we have forwarded your request to our technical team.

We assure you that same will be resolved at the earliest.

Do feel free to contact our 24-hour live chat help at Remit2India.com for a prompt solution to your query.

Assuring you of our best services always.

Thanks and regards,
Remit2India Team

Well, atleast they got my name right. But nothing else happens, I keep getting HTML emails. The support team still has my ticket open, so I remind them again, and again, and again. Each time, I get back the **same** boiler plate response. Frustrated, I wrote to them again:

I’m amazed at the audacity of your customer support team.

Here’s the response you gave to my ‘original’ complaint:

[snip boiler place response]

After which I wrote again saying that *nothing* had changed. Here’s the
response you gave to this second mail:
Dear Diwaker

Thank you for writing to us.

This is to inform you that we are currently working on it and we have
forwarded your request to our technical team.

We assure you that same will be resolved at the earliest.

Do feel free to contact our 24-hour live chat help at Remit2India.com for
a prompt solution to your query.

Assuring you of our best services always.

Thanks and regards,

Remit2India Team

As you can see, not much has changed in the response either. Please understand
that you’re customers are *NOT* kids, and you should not try to patronize
them by sending such obviously useless and uninformative responses. It would
have been much better had you identified the cause of the problem or the
source of the delay. From a technical/managerial standpoint, fixing this
problem is trivial, and I can see no conceivable reason why Remit2India is
not serious about such issues.

Good luck with building your customer base with such excellent customer
support!

Diwaker

It really amazes me how these companies manage to ignore any customer feedback. Given the fact the service is largely targeting tech-savvy audience who spend some time online and are comfortable doing their finances online, I think its just dumb to ignore and not address these relatively small issues.

Good luck to Remit2India!